


Half-Mast

by angelgazing



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-13
Updated: 2010-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/pseuds/angelgazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're both just too many sharp points shoved together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half-Mast

His foot slips, slides against the too-often-washed soft_soft_ grey-blue flannel of the sheet, and Sirius' thumb presses, sways, rasps against the stubble-rough skin of his jaw. "You can't," he says, a gasp of something half-forgotten across the sharp point of Remus' collarbone. "You _can't_."

And Remus is breathless, ageless, fingers tangled in Sirius' hair, palm curved around the back of his skull like maybe, _maybe_ if he tries hard enough _this time_ he can make it different than it was before. He shakes, and there are too many words trapped behind the recklessness of Sirius' mouth on his, too many half-forgotten things, half-true things, half-thing things, caught on the tangle of tongues.

"You _can't_," Sirius says again, and scrapes his teeth across Remus' lip. "We're just old men now," he says, his fingertips digging into the sharp points of Remus' ribs. "That's all."

\---

Remus wakes up to a bleak, drizzling, horrible Sunday morning, and he isn't sixteen anymore. He isn't twenty anymore. He isn't _thirty_ anymore. He turns over and goes back to sleep anyway, facing away from the window and toward Sirius, hair streaked grey with time and worry and guilt. Sirius is smirking, roughly—_sharply_; they're both just too many sharp points shoved together now.

Sirius' knees are knobbly like Remus' used to be; his wrists are small, deceptively fragile; his elbow is bony and grinding into a very soft and vulnerable part of Remus' belly. His thin wrist knocks with Remus' chin, and he chuckles, bone-like-fingers tapping one-two- onetwo-one-two-onetwo against Remus' cheek. "Get up and make me some tea," he says, his sharp, sharp ankle digging into Remus' calf.

Remus, falling back on old habits, ignores him and pretends to snore. Loudly.

\---

June edges into July with Sirius in a snit, Remus in a pair of swim shorts that are nearly falling off his hips, and sand in very unfortunate places.

Sirius' nose and cheeks are flushed red with anger and too-much sun, and his hair is wild from drying in the wind. He's got a towel wrapped and knotted around his waist that is, in all honesty, pink. It used to be red, and Remus tells him it still is when he's _wearing it_, but it hasn't seen red in far too many washings for Remus to properly count.

"The problem with trying to drown your mates," Remus tells him, "is that occasionally they will attempt to return the favour. And have I mentioned yet today how very much pink is your colour?"

Sirius from before would've laughed, would've strutted, would've lost the towel and taken Remus on the kitchen table. Would've, at the very least, been able to take a little of what he always tried so desperately to serve when swimming was on the menu. Sirius from now just stalks off and slams the bedroom door behind him while trying to dig sand out of his ear.

Remus suggests that he try a fork for all his sand removal needs.

\---

It takes exactly twenty-seven minutes for Sirius to whomp Remus at a game of chess. He knocks the table when he jumps up to do a victory dance not previously seen on a person over the age of fifteen. Remus' tea sloshes over his cup and across his knuckles, and it's cold, but he still sucks it off his fingers ruefully, and pretends it isn't just because it makes Sirius tremble in all sorts of fun ways.

There's never been anything quite as fun as finding ways to make Sirius forget that he's won again.

\---

Sirius traces the knobs of his spine with his teeth, with his fingertips that're bone-sharp, with his _tongue_. He sucks on the hallow-dip of Remus' back, falls into the way it _curves_. He says, "You really are too easy," with his breath just hot enough against Remus' damp skin to make him shiver.

Remus trembles, and bites down on the fleshy part of the palm of his hand to keep from saying any of the many, many things he wants to.

\---

At midnight, Sirius wakes up, sits up, starts sucking in air like he's been underwater for longer than Remus has ever let him be before. And that's _it_, isn't it, Remus realizes, bleary with sleep and his own dreams and surprise. This time, _this time_, Remus left him underwater for twelve fucking _years_ and even now—even with the truth tucked into every inch of him screaming—even _now_, there's a dark, unhappy part of Remus that isn't so sure he didn't deserve it.

There's that dark, unhappy, sleep-deprived, purple-bruised part of Remus that wants to say, "See, see, you great pillock, you grand royal on high of dunces, you should've _trusted me_ instead of him. You should have known me well enough."

Instead he sighs against the curve of Sirius' shoulder, presses his palm flat on Sirius' chest. Instead he says, "Shhhh," into the dark, sweat-damp crook of Sirius' neck. "Shhhh."

\---

Sirius pokes at Remus' bruise. It's big and yellow, and, according to logic apparently only known to half-mad men named Sirius Black, calling for a good poking. Remus considers his options, then gives him the finger and goes back to the Prophet.

Sirius keeps poking.

\---

He laughs roughly, _sharply_. Like a bark. Like a cry. Like it's been torn from him. He presses his mouth to the inside of Remus' wrist, to the bruise he left there, and he _laughs_.


End file.
